SHADOW EVIDENCE INTELLIGENCE
– these words could be separated by slashes. But I don’t
think the anger of the present moments of being alive would permit that.
It has to (have that) bite. That sound bite. Or we’re wounded
(for life).

Life is obligatory.
So is suffering. So is poetry. Get it? There’s space in this (there
has to be space in this) for verbs. (I’m writing from memory.)

These texts come back
upon themselves in ways that almost erase them(selves). Life cracks
/ emits poems / so much dust (shadow). I’m paying attention (it
might just not look like it to me).

Indeed
– there’s no way out of the mind-grit of the negative euphoria.

This is of the kind
of spiritual poetry that I’ve come to be able to expect of Kristin.
And I’ve always defined spirit as life energy / soul as life source.
And this has – both.

I’m missing
everyone that isn’t here.

Whitman included everything.
This excludes nothing. Are these two approaches the same or different?
I leave it for you to decide. Or perhaps I’m merely being clever.
The reality is (I think) that only the times have changed (deteriorated).
It’s much harder now to write poetry than when Whitman did. When
last the church licked the lilac’s groom.

If a
soldier dies while maiming
another person the last
living memory of that soldier’s lifewill
be in the mind of the
person maimed:
so the last
memory of youis in the mind
of thepeople who behold
youso be gentle
with them lestthey be gentle
with your imagein memoryin mourningin the work
ofseeing you in
life.Memory survivesthe corporal
state:this is the
only afterlife you can be sure of.

We fly
away / fly away / fly away home. Responsibility keeps us alive –
or it could if we’d listen. Responsibility to life (life (life
(responsibility to life))). And then I could stop – here.

The text of hers from
which the above is taken – Amateur Order – is divided into
sections the way a business plan might be – I / A / 1 (for example)
– and as such it stands counter to all business plans but the
plan for the business of shared life. A counter plan. Or – a plan
counter to all that.

This is a thrilling
book in the sense that it can pace us. Give us a reason for being in
this place (is there a time (left)?).

OIL

And yes – it
is all about the fucking OIL – as if there were any left.

OIL

In another sense –
in a very real other sense – what this country is drilling for
(everywhere) is death. Tears come to mind.

There really is nothing
left to laugh about these days. Unless we make it up (a very very very
very temporary respite).

John Tavener wrote
The Protecting Veil (I’m listening to it now) – but we don’t
have one (unless we make that (that) up). Can we make it up? Can we
make such things up? I don’t know.

We find ourselves
engrossed upon the sea. But what of what is happening? To you? To me?

The sad dead palpable
insult of a fact.

If we were more cadenced
we would be more free.

Poetry
is not free.
It costs so fucking much it hurts.
The letters of the alphabet are the most powerful things in the world.

We bring ourselves
down into the world – in order to cope with it – and it
doesn’t help. O well (well! (o well!))!

(The content
of the moment is the act of being continuously present.)

And
yet everything is as important as all that.

Actually
– there is no time.

The
word force in and of itself does not include a sense of measure; i.e.,
used on its own, it assumes total and complete power over another body.
In the case of a “forced entry,” for example (the use of violence
to clear a passageway, either through a doorway, or through a woman) there
is absolutely no sense of measure; the entry was completely and absolutely
cleared of its obstruction.

This makes me so unalterably
sad.

We have only
ourselves to pardon for the mess we’re in – and I think
Kristin knows it or she wouldn’t write with such passion and forgiveness
(which is compassion (after all)). We’re in it with her –
and made to feel that – and that’s a good thing –
the stuff of ageless lambasting poetry. A sort of satire in a way –
but dead (dead (dead)) serious.

This
is the difficulty of poetry.

and
–

No one
can escape being implicated in the flow: this is the difficulty of poetry.

But
the present is the tense of poetry. The present is the only tense
of poetry. (Thank god (oof!) for those of us who are tense!)

For
all writing is a palimpsest. If only it could be so (and enduringly
so) all over the pathetic text written by abhorrent history.